Alex_V

Marvin said:
Millionaires and billionaires on the left or right advocate for others in words, not actions. They align themselves with the underprivileged to get what they want. 

At the heart of this point is "whataboutism." In other words, Someone cannot be an advocate for the poor unless they give all their money away. Similarly, no one can be an environmentalist because they drive a car, or fly on holiday, or wear synthetics, or breathe out, or whatever. Sure, I have eaten fast food, but it doesn't mean that I cannot support those workers when they go on strike for better wages, even though I may pay more for my burger if they succeed. Your argument ignores the ‘systemic’ nature of these problems—things are interrelated. There is nowhere outside of the system for someone to stand and criticise it.

Marvin said:

Millionaires and billionaires on the left or right advocate for others in words, not actions. They align themselves with the underprivileged to get what they want. We have a closed economic system, the rich getting rich causes the poor to stay poor. Wealth inequality is about unfair distribution of wealth, it's not possible for the rich to get richer and the poor to get richer at the same time without increasing the supply of money. Things hardly ever change for the better for the people genuinely at the bottom despite the claims of progress whenever the privileged manage to further improve their status

You are talking about a ‘zero-sum game,’ that the economic pie is a certain size, and therefore it's about who gets what share. Economics is not like that. Take trade: the idea is that by freeing up trade everyone gets better off. When the talk is about benefitting the poor, conservative politicians want us to believe the system is zero-sum. “How will we pay for it?” When the talk is about wars or benefitting the rich (lower taxes etc.) suddenly there are no sums  It's well known that if a government wants to inject money into the economy, the fastest way is through the pockets of the poor, either in wages or other benefits. Because of their great need, they spend it right away, oiling the engine of the economy. The most famous example is the New Deal. And, studies have shown that the poor tend to spend money in surprising ways, but wisely—because they have to. 

Every company has a budget, when a millionaire actress 'breaks down barriers' and manages to push for a few million more to fight 'injustice', that budget gets taken away from the people doing their makeup and results in fewer jobs, stagnated wages, poorer working conditions for the people at the bottom.

Silly example. As I've alluded to above, the pie gets bigger in a thriving economy. Which means more people have money. The opposite is a contraction in money supply, known as a ‘recession.’ 

The rich never caused the recent changes to wages due to the pandemic, that was workers directly making a decision that what companies were offering wasn't good enough.

We agree.

Complainants aren't automatically credible just because people are biased against big companies. 

I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.

Amazon is an example of genuine exploitation that needs to be sorted out. The nature of their business is that profit increases through improved efficiency in logistics and that directly comes with a human cost. The same applies to some of the companies that Apple uses to make their products.

We agree.

These overpaid complainers are not them and aren't representing them. These are people making hundreds of thousands of dollars per year complaining that they think they aren't getting paid enough and they don't even know for sure because they don't know everyone else's salaries.

If the market has set their wages, they are by definition not overpaid. I hear that living and working in Silicon Valley has become astonishingly expensive. Again, I give them the benefit of the doubt.

Marvin said:

The most vocal of these particular working folk are the rich, just like the multi-millionaire actresses that go on about pay gaps.

snip

The volume and severity of the reports is minuscule for the size of the company. It all comes across as another example of modern day manufactured outrage by attention-seeking social media inhabitants.

One-sided tosh. Conservatives like to say that only Hollywood stars complain about capitalist exploitation. They paint them as “out-of-touch elites,” to diminish what they say in the minds of the people they are advocating for. Cleverly turning the class struggle upside-down: “Don’t listen, it’s really the Republicans and the billionaires who are on your side.” First, are the actors not morally compelled to say something about injustice, just as anyone else? Second, should they not use their platform? Who else is on TV in your celebrity-obsessed country? How often does guy-who-sleeps-under-the-bridge get invited to a talk show? 

9secondkox2 said:

Apple needs to stay out of politics. 

If Texas wants to outlaw killing babies, that’s fine. States have governing authority. 

If texas wants to ensure election integrity to secure that my voice is actually my voice and that it is heard, then that’s great! It’s so strange how the left wants me to not be able to travel without my medical history on my passport ID. But they want to push for me to vote without proving who I am via ID. Unbelievable.

Apple just needs to worry about making the best products and taking care of their workers. Stay out of politics and moral issues that you may be on the wrong side about. 

If they want to pull out of Texas over a moral difference but stay in China despite gross human rights abuse and spying, then hey, go ahead snd show your true colors. 

This is "politics for dummies," isn't it?
1. Killing babies? Have you got any idea of what you re talking about? Oh, and do you care at all about real babies who are actually born? (I didn't think so, either.)
2. Election integrity? You mean, for elections that are overwhelmingly fair and accurate? … with minuscule amounts of fraud ever detected?  When voters turn away from your party, now you're suddenly worried? How is, laser-targeting one demographic to dissuade them from voting, about integrity?

Marvin said:

Usually there's not a massive problem, nowadays people are eviscerated over getting anything less than A+ on the purity tests. In fact, people can even get A+ and the lived reality of other people who believe otherwise is enough to fall below expectations.

Say there are 4 software engineers with the same role, Simon (white male) gets $110k/year, Craig (white male) gets $100k, Rebecca (white female) gets $102k, Sarah (minority female) gets $103k.

Even the survey done by the employees only found a 5-6% gap:

And it's not like Apple isn't doing anything or is against it, they have a whole page with animated charts about it:

Snip

Apple's been at this game a long time and has employed a lot of people over the years and they can see through people's nonsense. No company can ever be free from issues between employees, they are people like everyone else and there are no rules that can ever adequately make a working environment anywhere near ideal for everyone but they clearly have a process that is working well for the vast majority of their over 100k employees worldwide.

Every one is a capitalist in America, from an office clerk, to a waitress to the janitor—arguing passionately, at length, and endlessly for their continued exploitation. 

Facebook, like Google, is a marketing company. Like Google, they profit from knowing a lot about us. They can paint a pretty detailed picture based on our FB activities, and through cookies they track us on the internet. But they couldn’t know what we did beyond the internet. So they buy WhatsApp. Now they have our phone numbers. Every time we give a company our Tel number, they sell it on to marketing firms, who sell it on to FB. Now they know what we buy in supermarkets, pharmacies, the clubs we join etc.